VANTAGE POINT DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTH KOREA PHOTO NEWS Ceremonies Marking the Korean War Armistice Agreement 2 North Korea’s Violations of Armistice Agreement 3 Vol. 36 No. 9 SEPTEMBER 2013 COVER STORY DMZ PEACE PARK: FROM ARMISTICE TO PEACE 4 CONTENTS “I hope to work toward an international park inside the DMZ. It will be a park that sends a message of peace to all of humanity,” President Park said. SOUTH KOREA'S POLICY REVIEW CONSISTENT POSITION IN INTER-KOREAN ECONOMIC COOPERATION 10 Park said that the two Koreas should work out a deal in line with “common sense and international standards” about normalizing the joint complex. OPINION IMPLICATION OF REVIEW OF KOREAN WAR BY INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY 14 Washington and Beijing made a new approach to the war and its armistice while holding gala functions to mark the 60th armistice anniversary. INTERVIEW with An Chan-il TRAGIC FATE OF NORTH KOREAN DEFECTORS 17 TIP ON NORTH KOREA EXTRAVAGANT CELEBRATIONS OF 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARMISTICE 20 The impoverished country held various congratulatory performances and threw lavish offering of national orders to a total of 47,075 ‘meritorius people.’ N. KOREA’S ARMISTICE VIOLATIONS AND PROVOCATIONS 24 North Korea breached the armistice a total of 425,271 times since it became effective in July 1953 through the end of April 1994. DATA ON N.K.'S HUMAN RIGHTS REALITY OF MALNUTRITION, POOR MEDICAL SERVICE AND DEATH 28 It is widely known that many inmates ended up dying due to a combination of beating, starvation and other causes, according to defector testimonies. NEWS FOCUS N. Korea Marks Korean War Armistice with Military Parade 31 N. Korean Ship Carrying Undeclared Weapon Seized by Panama 34 U.N. Commission Begins Investigation into N. Korean Rights Abuses 36 MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS Internal Affairs / External Affairs / Inter-Korean Relations 38 STUDIES By Cho Young-seo, Ph.D. THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF THE KIM JONG-UN REGIME IN NORTH KOREA AND PROSPECTS FOR ITS CHANGE 48 FOREIGN TIPS 58 PEOPLE & CHRONOLOGICAL REVIEW 60 COVER PHOTO : Barbed-wire fence along the southern boundary of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) stretches through the west- central area bisecting South and North Korea in this photo taken in July 2013. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has proposed an idea to build an international peace park inside the DMZ to transform the heavily armed border area into a place of peace and trust. (Yonhap Photo) PHOTO NEWS Vantage Point September 2013 Ceremonies Marking the Korean War Armistice Agreement ❶ ❷ ❸ ❹ S. Korean President Park delivers a speech at a ceremony in Seoul on July 27. U.S. President Barack Obama (left) participates in a ceremony in Washington on July 27. Representatives from the Korean War-joined nations visit the U.N. Cemetery in Busan on July 28. A group of foreign veterans who participated in the Korean War and their family members look around a Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission meeting room at Panmunjom on July 29. 2 Vantage Point September 2013 PHOTO NEWS North Korea’s Violations of Armistice Agreement ❺ ❻ ❼ ❽ ❾ ❿ USS Pueblo seajacked by North Korea in 1968 Tragic scene of North Korea's ax-wielding murder rampage in 1976 North Korean infiltration tunnels in 1970s North Korean submarine infiltrated into East Sea in 1996 Seized equipments from North Korean guerrillas 3 COVER STORY Vantage Point September 2013 DMZ PEACE PARK: FROM ARMISTICE TO PEACE “I hope to work toward an international park inside the DMZ. It will be a park that sends a message of peace to all of humanity,” President Park said. By Lee Kwang-ho he fratricidal Korean War ceased 60 years ago, but the dark shadow of the war still lingers over the divided Korean T Peninsula. The Armistice Agreement of July 27, 1953 barely changed the division drawn across the peninsula along the 38th paral- lel shortly after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. After the three-year war, the peninsula was split into two sides along the heavily-fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). For the past 60 years, South and North Korea have always been on the frontline of a severe ideological confrontation, fighting each other in the border areas, including the maritime border, largely due to the North’s persistent provocations. Permanent peace on the peninsula is the crucial topic as well as the dream for the entire Korean people. But Cold War strategies have intensified antagonism between the South and the North by deepening mutual distrust. Creation of Peace Park In this stark reality, a symbolic project is emerging that may change the whole landscape of the buffer zone. The creation of a peace park in the DMZ area is an idea South Korean President Park Geun-hye sug- gested during her address to the joint session of the U.S. Congress on May 9. The president called the peace park “a message of peace to all humanity.” President Park formally proposed to North Korea joint development 4 Vantage Point September 2013 COVER STORY of a peace park in the heavily-fortified bor- der in a Liberation Day address on Aug. 15 marking the end of Japan's 1910-45 colo- nial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Weeks earlier, she emphasized her vision to build an international peace park inside the DMZ to turn the heavily armed border area guarded by armed forces of the two Koreas into a place of “peace and trust.” She made the remark on July 27 at a cere- mony in Seoul commemorating the 60th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the Korean War. In her address to the U.S. Congress, Park said the last Cold War frontier “must live up to its name -- a zone that strengthens peace, not undermines it,” adding that she hoped to work toward an international park inside the fortified strip of land. President Park has her own North Korea policy dubbed “trustpolitik,” which consists South Korean President Park Geun-hye (center) receives of a trust-building process on the Korean applause from U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (left) and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (right) while delivering an peninsula, a trust-building process in address during a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress in Northeast Asia and an international peace Washington on May 8. (EPA-Yonhap Photo) park in the DMZ. The idea evolved from her pledge made during last year’s presi- dential campaign to promote tourism in DMZ has the potential to endanger global the areas near the DMZ by forging an eco- peace. We must defuse that danger. Not logical conservation belt. just South and North Korea. The world She added more political touches to the must also get involved.” original proposal to make it an internation- “It is with this vision in mind that I hope al project to be pursued in parallel with to work toward an international park her trust-building process, also dubbed the inside the DMZ. It will be a park that Korean Peninsula Trust Process. sends a message of peace to all of humani- “Sixty years ago, a stretch of earth bisect- ty. This could be pursued in parallel with ing the Korean Peninsula was cleared of my trust-building process. There, I believe arms. Today, that DMZ, drawn to prevent we can start to grow peace -- to grow trust. armed collision, is the most militarized It would be a zone of peace bringing place on the planet,” she told the U.S. together not just Koreans separated by a Congress. “And the standoff around the military line, but also the citizens of the 5 COVER STORY Vantage Point September 2013 world.” the Kaesong Industrial Complex has fallen The DMZ is a 248-kilometer strip of victim to the escalating stand-off in recent rugged no-man’s land stretching from coast months, and the Mount Kumgang tour pro- to coast on the Korean Peninsula, serving gram was shut down in 2008 after a South as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that Korean tourist was shot to death by a ended in an Armistice Agreement instead North Korean guard. of a peace treaty, keeping the two coun- Park’s idea for the international peace tries still technically at war. It runs from park along the DMZ drew some public seashore to seashore, through river valleys interest initially, but it has withered due to and across mountains. The DMZ is a buffer ensuing indifference. Many people ques- zone, stretching two kilometers north and tion if North Korea would participate in south and ranging four kilometers in the peace park project at a time when the width. relations between the two Koreas are at their lowest level in several years. Well-preserved Habitats Nevertheless, the Seoul government is preparing the project in an aggressive The natural isolation in the 4-kilometer- manner. Following Park’s remark on the wide buffer zone has created an involun- peace park, Seoul’s unification ministry, tary park that is recognized as one of the which handles inter-Korean affairs, well-preserved temperate habitats in the announced a plan to study measures to world and is home to 67 endangered build the park in conjunction with other species. It is also nature’s repository and related government agencies as part of home to approximately 2,716 kinds of wild efforts to allay inter-Korean tensions under animals and plants. Park’s trust-building process. Though generally calm, the DMZ has The ministry also said it will seek coop- been the scene of much saber-rattling and eration from the United Nations Command several small skirmishes between the two (UNC) in pursuing the plan, because the Koreas over the past several decades.